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This book studies practices of land management in peri-urban Ghana where traditional leadership forms a vibrant part of social life. International policy is currently witnessing a renewed interest in customary tenure systems as well as traditional leadership, through which it aims to enhance the efficiency of local governance and create general access to and secure rights in land. Contrary to these ideas, practice reveals a lack of security of customary tenure in areas with a high competition for land. Mounting evidence displays that customary systems often evolve inequitably and that traditional elites benefit disproportionally from commodification of land. In an effort to understand custom...
This book promotes discussion and understanding of customary law and explores its continued relevance in sub-Saharan Africa. It considers the characteristics of customary law and efforts to ascertain and codify customary law, and how this body of law differs in content, form and status from legislation and common law.
An ethnographic study of issues of land rights, property regimes, and ethnicity in West Africa. Focusing on an area of the savannah in northern Ghana and southwestern Burkina Faso, Land, Mobility, and Belonging in West Africa explores how rural populations have secured, contested, and negotiated access to land and how they have organized their communities despite being constantly on the move as farmers or migrant laborers. Carola Lentz seeks to understand how those who claim native status hold sway over others who are perceived to have come later. As conflicts over land, agriculture, and labor have multiplied in Africa, Lentz shows how politics and power play decisive roles in determining ac...
This study explores the limits to rights – and the interplay of rights and obligations – in land and natural resource governance. Drawing on legal developments from diverse thematic and geographic contexts, it aims to provide conceptual foundations for legal interventions to support the implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGT). Three clarifications are in order. First, an obligation can have both moral and legal dimensions; this study is primarily concerned with legal obligations. Second, the study takes a holistic approach to natural resource governance but focuses on land and surface resources. Third, while the study engages with the text of the VGGT, it also examines selected developments in national law – including constitutional, property, and natural resource law – and international law, particularly on human rights, the environment, and foreign investment. The study does not aim to provide a comprehensive discussion of these issues. Instead, it aims to outline the issues and encourage readers’ further reflection and debate.
This volume includes the following contributions: All Law Is Plural: Legal Pluralism and the Distinctiveness of Law * Plural Legal Orders of Land Use * Could Singapore's Legal Pluralism Work in Australia? * Substantive Equality and Maternal Mortality in Nigeria * An Institutional Perspective on Courts of Law in Colonial and Postcolonial Settings * Comparative Law at the Intersection of Religious and Secular Orders (Series: The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law - Vol. 65)
The book is aimed at students and scholars of conflict, Africa, ethnic politics, and religion. It may also appeal to religious and political leaders. It proposes a new perspective on how ethnicity and religion shape political outcomes and violence in Africa, adding psychological elements to standard political science arguments.
This publication is the product of the 25th Annual Africa and Diaspora Conference in 2016, organized by the Center for African Peace and Conflict Resolution at California State University, Sacramento, on the theme of “Peace and Conflict Resolution in Africa 25 Years Later: Lessons, Best Practices and Opportunities”. It brings together reflections on both historical and contemporary or recurring conflicts in Africa, especially on issues of ethno-religious conflicts, corruption, land, and leadership. The chapters include case studies and some theoretical perspectives on the persistent search for the right size and scope of visioning and programming on peace and conflict resolution in Afric...
This comprehensive Research Handbook offers an innovative analysis of environmental law in the global South and contributes to an important reassessment of some of its major underlying concepts. The Research Handbook discusses areas rarely prioritized in environmental law, such as land rights, and underlines how these intersect with issues including poverty, livelihoods and the use of natural resources, challenging familiar narratives around development and sustainability in this context and providing new insights into environmental justice.
This book explores the objectives pursued in donor programs, the methods used to advance them, and the underlying assumptions and strategies. It emphasizes the unexpected and sometimes unpleasant consequences of ignoring not only political and societal constraints but also advances in our technical approaches to performance improvement, the one area where the First World has a comparative advantage. The geographic scope of the work is broad, incorporating examples from Eastern and Central Europe, Latin America, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific region as well as from several First World nations. Justice Reform and Development examines First World assistance to justice or "rule of law" reforms in ...
Fires of Gold is a powerful ethnography of the often shrouded cultural, legal, political, and spiritual forces governing the gold mining industry in Ghana, one of Africa's most celebrated democracies. Lauren Coyle Rosen argues that significant sources of power have arisen outside of the formal legal system to police, adjudicate, and navigate conflict in this theater of violence, destruction, and rebirth. These authorities, or shadow sovereigns, include the transnational mining company, collectivized artisanal miners, civil society advocacy groups, and significant religious figures and spiritual forces from African, Islamic, and Christian traditions. Often more salient than official bodies of...